Skype Disguise to Beat Government Censors

By

Nick Clayton

Apr 4, 2012 9:38 am GMT

There is a continuing cat-and-mouse game going on between activists and Internet censors from repressive governments. We have reported before on how the volunteer-run Tor network is helping Iranians anonymize their online activity.

The problem is that the process of encryption creates characteristics which are visible to censors. So the Tor traffic can be blocked leaving other communications untouched.

Ars Technica reports on a neat solution called “SkypeMorph” developed by students Hooman Mohajeri Moghaddam, Baiyu Li, and Mohammad Derakhshan with Ian Goldberg, a professor at the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

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